Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

Today we're gonna talk about this theme of momentum, and what that means to you, what that means to you at work, and you can't get it out of me, but I'm gonna talk about what that means in life. Specific to this session, this idea of thinking and working strategically. You know, it's amazing how we'll look around and see the people that we live with or that we work with, or that we love with. I don't know about you but every time, every now and then, it seems like people have momentum, that they're moving forward. And I look over, I go, man I want some of that. Anyone ever felt like that? I want what they have. And then I always wonder, it's like, what is it that they have? How did they get it? What do they do to re-get it? I wrote a book with my wife called Get Momentum: How to Start When You're Stuck. The truth of that, it's really about how to re-get momentum. Because here's what I know, the people who are casting that anchor into deeper water, for those of you who are taking a look...

at that next mountain climb with less oxygen up there, you're gonna hit a challenge. Those people who are on a path to make something different, to make something big, to make something important, we're gonna hit a road bump from now and then. We're gonna hit that, what do we do when? As one of my mentors, Seth Godin, says, shift happens. What does the word strategic mean? That's probably the best place for us to start today. In fact, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna collect from the audience, and for those of you watching online, what I'd love to do is get in a single word. And I'm just gonna have you say these out loud and I'm going to repeat these back to you. But if we take a look at what that word strategic means. And what I'd like to do here is use the little bit of a whiteboard, if you took a moment, and there in your notes, whatever you're writing on or with today, but if you thought to yourself, based on your own experience, profession, career, job, and your personal life, vacations that you're taking, projects that you're working on at home or with your family, if I say the word strategic, what one or two word associations come to mind for you in the audience, and then I'll turn to the virtual audience in just a moment. But let me just hear three or four of these, yes. Making the most use of your time. So I'm gonna put, make, use, of time. Thoughtful. What I like about that is, once I take that word thoughtful, and I connect it to this one up on top, we need the time to think. In fact, a lot of the clients that I serve in the corporate, the military, the educational, and the nonprofit world, and you'll hear examples from all of those today, one of the things that people would tell us over and over again, I'm gonna ask the audience for help with this, is they'll say something like, I don't even have time to think. And that's something that I really believe in. Right before we launched here in the studio, I asked the audience, how many of you are working on something big, and then I followed it up with, who are my journalers? And I'll make the case throughout today for journaling for one specific reason. Writing slows me down. When I get going, I can talk at about 120 words per minute. When I type, I can go at about 70, 60 words per minute. But when I write, it's about 30 to 25. When I write with my non-dominant hand, it slows me down even further. So thank you for adding that thoughtfulness. I'm always trying to give people tactics on how to do that. I had two more and then we're gonna move on from this. Delegation of projects. And again, I'm gonna draw another arrow. One side of the coin, people will say, I don't have time to delegate. It's faster if I just do it, myself. Myself. Well that was a resounding from the audience here. (audience laughs) And then the other one is, what would happen if I began to delegate? And so I'll just put something up for all the leaders in the room, for those of you who manage. By the way, if you make a to-do list, you're a leader, right? You gotta convince yourself that you're gonna run through that list of to-dos. But I always remind people, I am delegating today so that six to 12 months from now, the person that I'm giving that work to is as good or better than me at that. And I invest in that time. It may take us 10, 20, 30 half-hour one-to-ones, but in six to 12 months, she or he needs to be as good or better than I am, otherwise I won't get rid of it, otherwise I'm stuck working weekends more, I'm stuck working nights more. And so how do I think strategically, how do it think thoughtfully, how do I think with plans in mind? How do I create that time that I know I want and need? Okay we had one more from the live audience and then I think I'm gonna ask to see if there's anything from the online that came in. What is the bigger picture? What is the bigger picture? And I'm reminded of that quote that says, look, it doesn't matter how fast you're going, if you're in Los Angeles and you're trying to get to Seattle, stop driving south, right? It doesn't matter how fast and how far we're moving if that's off point. And so that question of, what is the bigger picture, what do we both agree on? I think that term of getting on the same page is a significant one. So as we move forward, you've got some handouts with you in the room and for those of you online, you should've been able to download that PDF. Everything that we have in the studio, you can access online. And everything that you access online, you have here in the studio. As far as where we're going over the next few minutes, this idea of thinking and working strategically, I just wanna highlight a couple of the table of contents for this session. We're gonna separate out the product from the process. We're gonna do this a couple of different times. For those of you who set goals, for those of you who look at your calendar 90 days, 180 days, or 365 days from now, and you're starting to build that, what the future is gonna look like, there's two prompts that I'll always put out there. What is the destination you're moving toward? What's the physical product? What's the event? What's the thing that FedEx is gonna take away or that you're gonna standard deliver? What's the destination that you're driving toward? And then I'll spend a little bit more time unpacking this. The second piece is going to be what I call the direction, or maybe it's the rules of engagement. As we are submitting that proposal, as we're delivering that program, as we're creating that next center that you were talking about, how are we gonna play together? What's the direction that we take along the way? I call it process and product. You'll notice my question words on the screen, for those of you watching or are here in the studio, the question words next to be, do, have, how to be. We're gonna talk a lot today about personal branding. And there's a lot of information out there, there's a lot of courses you can take on personal branding, build your brand, create your brand. I happen to be a little contrarian on this one. I don't think that I build my brand. I do one of two things. I magnify my brand in what I want people to know me for, or I change or modify my brand in what they know me for that I would like to shift. We have a brand. When someone looks at us, they see what shoes we're wearing, what watch we're wearing, what car we're driving, what computer we're using, PC or Mac. Do I magnify or do I modify? As far as the, where to do, that really for me is, if I'm gonna think strategically, I'm gonna spend the time that it takes to put my ideas on to paper. And one of my favorite quotes about that is, how could I possibly know what I think until I see what I say? And again, it's making that case for journaling. When I see what I'm telling myself... Anybody talk to themselves? How many of you talk to yourselves? Does anyone talk out loud to yourselves? Okay, so we gotta be careful. Sometimes in the audience, people just start talking out loud. My question is, what am I saying? What am I telling myself about that opportunity that just showed up? What am I telling myself about that mistake that someone on the team just made? Where do I put that effort of to-do-ness? And then finally, I wanna talk about the have piece of strategic thinking. What do I want to have? What do I want them to have? What do I wanna hold, what do I wanna look at, what do I wanna point at? Recently I was researching one of my favorite biographies, guy named Leonardo da Vinci, probably have heard of him. And Walter Isaacson just wrote a new biography. Isaacson biography, he wrote the biography of Benjamin Franklin, he wrote a great biography of Steve Jobs. He wrote a wonderful biography on innovators throughout the Silicon Valley and beyond. Anyway, in this book about Leonardo da Vinci, I didn't know this, I learned stuff as I went along, but Leonardo spent nearly 15 years painting this little painting, if anyone's been to Paris, it's about yea big, spent 15 years painting Mona Lisa. And I mean, strategic thinking, at some point, I would look back, personally, I'd look back and say, okay, do I need a 14th year on this thing? Do I need to continue that thinking process? So what else? We're gonna point that strategic thinking at a couple of different areas, three specific. I'm gonna separate out for us today a little bit between career and job. I'm also gonna follow that up with volunteer or expression. Now there's some people who have the magic Venn diagram that all comes together, that their career is what they love to do for a job, and they actually get to contribute to the community in some volunteer or expression way. Others of you may be watching online, maybe some of you in here, you are working with those. And I know for me, I didn't leave education as a career, I simply switched jobs from teaching at a high school to teaching inside of corporate, and then with military, and churches, and hospitals, and nonprofits around the world. Finally, I wanna talk a little bit about how significant it is to add to, I don't wanna say take away from, but I do wanna say, look at the network. I believe that everyone that I work with, everyone in this audience, everyone watching today, we are one awkward eye contact session away from a new opportunity. I'm that guy in elevators. So the elevator door close, I'm gonna look around. It doesn't work well in the East Coast. In London, they don't know what to do with me. But I figure, lookit, everyone that I know now was a stranger before. And so if I can build and expand, I'll use the term today, social network, for those of you watching online, you're part of the social network, I'm sure, of CreativeLive, I don't just mean social media network. I mean your social network. These are teachers, or coaches. These are pastors. These are best friends. These are people that, when you text them, they'll reply. When you call, they'll actually pick up the phone. These are the people that you can sit down with over a coffee and share what you're working with or take 'em to lunch and you can start to expand that goal, that vision you have. Or maybe you go to dinner and over dinner you outline where you're heading and where you're going. Coffee, lunch, dinner, they just get more expensive, by the way. That's how I separate out. But I promise, I will buy anybody a $4.50 latte in any city of the world if they'll give me something that I can use for the rest of my life. So let's go to the handouts, for those of you who have a handout, or a workbook, for those of you who brought a notebook today. And what I'm gonna ask you to do, and for those of you online, I'm gonna ask you to do this activity right along with us, is I'm just gonna count to 30 by myself, and in 30 seconds, what I'd like you to do is to give yourself a one or two sentence definition of the word strategic. Earlier on, you shared some words, I got to expand on that a little bit. You kinda took a look at the table of content of where we're going today. What I invite you to do now is just spend about more seconds letting yourself see your own definition of that word, strategic.